leqsebi

VIOLET ON THE MOUNTAIN
mourning the deceased hero Jabana are comforted with the thought that a bit of sunlight will follow
him to the banquet in the underworld:
His womenfolk were weeping, their faces bathed in tears.
Do not weep for him, womenfolk: Jabana will not fare badly.
Jabana went down to the land of souls, a ray of sunshine followed him;
There he found the feasting-table spread with food and wine.
20. Bzha dia chkimi (“The sun is my mother”). Source: MP 81. Recorded in Mingrelia by K’.
Tatarishvili, ca. 1910. Note that, pace Francis of Assisi and his “Brother Sun and Sister Moon”,
Georgian folklore identifies the sun as female and the moon as male. The pattern recurs in poem
#32, “The woman Khwaramze.”
21. Aguna (“Aguna”). Source: MP 113. Recorded in Ach’ara by T. Sakhok’ia in 1898. Aguna is the
Georgian Bacchus, the deity of viticulture. His cult is observed throughout the grape-growing
regions of West Georgia. This poem is to be recited in the vineyards or wine cellar on the first or
second day of the new year. The accompanying rituals vary from one locality to another. In Guria,
the family’s first guest of the year brings bread and the head of the pig served at the New Year’s
dinner out to the vineyard. While striking the pig’s head with a stick, he intones the poem to Aguna
[DGF I, 22]. In the province of Lechkhumi, the elder of the household calls on Aguna while pouring
wine onto the base of a grapevine [MP 265]. Bakhvi and Ask’ana (second line) are neighboring
villages in southern Guria, near the province of Achara .
22. Tamar dedopal viq’av (“I was Tamar the Queen”). Sources: Ko 144; Go 135. Variants: Ko 257-
258; PKh 61, RFl 259-267. Songs and legends about Tamar, who ruled from 1184-1218, abound in
all parts of Georgia. It is not difficult to understand why. The reign of the woman the chroniclers
called Tamar Mepe (“Tamar the King”) saw the culmination of her nation’s Golden Era. The
Georgian crown exercised authority over a territory reaching from Samsun to Baku and south to the
Araks River, including much of the North Caucasus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. Tamar’s
subjects may have numbered ten million or more. “The knight in the leopard’s skin,” considered by
Georgians to be the finest work ever written in their language, was composed in her honor. Within
two decades after Tamar’s death, Mongol armies were sweeping through eastern Georgia, and so
began a long period of decline and foreign occupation, leading up to the annexation of Georgia by
the Russian Empire in 1801. While the exploits of Tamar the King, coupled with an understandable
nostalgia for the cultural and political glories of her time, are sufficient to guarantee her a special
place in the hearts of her people, there is another factor as well. The Tamar of folklore has the
attributes of a deity, probably the result of an amalgamation of the historical Tamar and a pre-
Christian celestial goddess [see SR 679-700]. The poem is in the form of an epitaph, in which the
deceased monarch summarizes her achievements (no actual epitaph has come down to us, and
Tamar’s grave has never been found). In addition to collecting tribute from human cities, she is
credited with the conquest of the “Kajes,” a race of demons with magical powers frequently
mentioned in Georgian folklore. Tamar is believed to have ordered the building of churches and
castles throughout Georgia, and in every part of the country stand ancient edifices which, according
to the local population, were built at her command. Many of these shrines and towers are located
atop steep ridges. According to an account recorded in the province of Kartli, “at Tamar’s command
the swallows brought sand and the cranes brought stones, and in this way she erected churches,
monasteries, and fortresses on inaccessible mountains and cliffs” [Ko 375]. Numerous variants of
this “epitaph” have been collected throughout Georgia [see RFl 259-267]. In some, Tamar is credited
with the construction of particular churches (for example, the cathedrals of Ubisi and Manglisi,
which in fact were built long before her time), and the list of cities she is said to have subjugated
varies somewhat. Almost all versions mention her placing of boundary markers in the sea and
drawing the dry land toward her (placing the land and sea under her dominion), and conclude with
the lines “I, who accomplished such deeds, took nought but a nine-yard cloth” [that is, I took nothing
nothing with me into the grave save my burial shroud]. Two versions specify that she drew her last
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